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Breaking the mould: NHL captains come from all across the spectrum

Vancouver Canucks\' goalie Roberto Luongo, sporting the captain\'s C on his helmet, makes a save during second period preseason NHL action against the Anaheim Ducks in Vancouver, B.C., on Sunday October 5, 2008. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck
Author: The Hockey News

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Breaking the mould: NHL captains come from all across the spectrum

You have captains that fight, others that score and now even one that stops pucks. There are grizzled veterans wearing the "C" and a growing number of fresh-faced youngsters. Some captains are willing to call out teammates and deliver passionate speeches while others prefer to let their play do the talking.

The only essential quality that veteran coach Ken Hitchcock believes is necessary is that a captain convinces his teammates that he'll always put the team first.

The player that does that best for Hitchcock's Columbus Blue Jackets is Rick Nash, who was given the "C" by the organization in March.

"The problem you can have as a captain in our league is when the players don't feel like you're sincere or that you have the team's best interest at heart," said Hitchcock. "I think that's why the players like Rick so much is that they see a level of sincerity that's very, very high and I think they really like what he brings to the table."

Nash turned 24 in June and would have been considered an extremely young captain in years gone by. Times have certainly changed.

The Chicago Blackhawks made 20-year-old Jonathan Toews their captain during the off-season while the Philadelphia Flyers did the same thing with 23-year-old Mike Richards. The Los Angeles Kings made 23-year-old Dustin Brown their captain Wednesday. Of course, there's also 21-year-old Sidney Crosby who enters his second season wearing the "C" for the Pittsburgh Penguins.

The most surprising decision about a captain came when the Vancouver Canucks recently announced that goalie Roberto Luongo was going to succeed Markus Naslund. NHL rules prevent Luongo from leaving his crease to talk with the referees or actually having the "C" stitched on his jersey, although he did have the letter painted on his mask.

The Canucks' decision was questioned in some circles and applauded in others. New Jersey Devils goalie Martin Brodeur, long a leader on his team, loved it.

"It's about time they're recognizing the goalies," he told reporters. "It's kind of nice, you know? They went out and picked the guy that they thought was the best leader to lead their team."

The Buffalo Sabres named Craig Rivet captain on Wednesday. He becomes the team's first full-time captain since Stu Barnes from 2001-'03. Buffalo used a rotating captaincy last season.

Atlanta, Florida and Toronto were the only NHL teams that hadn't identified a leader by Wednesday.

The Maple Leafs are expected to go with a rotating captaincy in their first season without longtime leader Mats Sundin in 14 years. Sundin had worn the "C" since 1997 and was the NHL's second-longest tenured captain.

Joe Sakic is the longest-serving leader. The 39-year-old centre was named captain of the Quebec Nordiques in 1992, and has continued to lead the team since it moved to Denver and became the Colorado Avalanche in 1995.

Montreal's Saku Koivu and Ottawa's Daniel Alfredsson have been captains since 1999 while Calgary's Jarome Iginla has had the honour since 2003. Ethan Moreau enters his second season as the captain in Edmonton.

A couple NHL teams have given the letter back to players who've already worn it before.

Scott Niedermayer is again the Anaheim Ducks captain. He was the player who first hoisted the Stanley Cup after that team's championship win in 2007 but was replaced by Chris Pronger last fall while he was considering retirement.

Meanwhile, the Tampa Bay Lightning are again Vincent Lecavalier's team. The Lightning made him the youngest captain in league history in 1999 (a record later eclipsed by Crosby) before taking it away from him a couple years later.

He was more than happy to get the "C" back.

"It's a great honour to be captain of the Tampa Bay Lightning," said Lecavalier. "I have been here many years and there are a lot of great leaders on this team. I don't think you need a letter on your sweater to be a leader, but it's definitely a great honour to be captain."

John Tavares scores with a move no one had ever done before

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John Tavares scores with a move no one had ever done before

The New York Islanders captain undressed Jay Bouwmeester in the most unusual of ways, but the important thing is he kept the puck. Then he buried it

John Tavares: good at hockey.

The New York Islanders captain pulled off an absolutely stunning series of moves last night, culminating in a laser-shot goal against St. Louis Blues goalie Jake Allen. But let's get back to his humbling of Olympic gold medallist Jay Bouwmeester, because that's where the real magic happened.

Witness, as Tavares puts his stick behind his back and grabs it with his other hand while still skating and fending off Bouwmeester. Then, since he is a patient boy, Tavares waits and waits and waits before firing one top corner on Allen:

As the soccer folks would say, lovely. New York would go on to beat the Blues 3-2, with Anders Lee scoring the other two goals for the Isles. After struggling to begin the season, New York is now 6-2-2 in its past 10 games. Tavares leads the squad with 21 points through 26 contests.

Canadiens’ Pacioretty spent all of November playing on a broken foot

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Canadiens’ Pacioretty spent all of November playing on a broken foot

Max Pacioretty has a good reason for his slump throughout November: he was playing with a broken foot. Pacioretty found his groove to start December, though, with three goals and four points in four games.

The Canadiens’ major off-season move saw P.K. Subban shipped out to Nashville in exchange for Predators captain Shea Weber, and there have been rumblings that Montreal could be heading towards another major move at some point this season, this including captain Max Pacioretty.

While the rumor may sound far-fetched or bizarre, it wasn’t without reason. You see, Pacioretty, 28, was off to one of the slowest starts of his career and through the early part of the season he looked as though he was a shell of his former goal-scoring self. By the end of October, Pacioretty had just two goals. Come the end of November, he had increased that to just five. All the while, Pacioretty was watching his ice time fluctuate.

It’s near impossible to know exactly when the injury came, especially without Pacioretty outright saying when it occurred, but it’s not hard to believe that the veteran winger was fighting through injury over the course of the past month. Pacioretty has been one of the league’s most consistent goal scorers in the past four seasons.

From the start of the 2012-13 lockout shortened campaign until the culmination of the 2015-16 season, Pacioretty scored 121 goals, good for the ninth most in the league. His .43 goals per game rate over that span is the same as that of Jamie Benn’s and ranked ahead of Sidney Crosby, Rick Nash, James Neal, Vladimir Tarasenko, Evgeni Malkin and you get the point. This season, though, Pacioretty’s five goals through 23 games had his goals rate at roughly half of his rate of the past few seasons.

That has changed in early December, though. Since the calendar turned over, Pacioretty has been one of the hottest scorers in the Montreal lineup and a terror on the ice. In four games, he has a team-leading three goals and four points, no one has put more rubber on net than Pacioretty’s 15 shots and there isn’t a single forward in the lineup seeing more ice time or shifts. He broke out of his November-long slump in a big way, too, with a two-goal, three-point performance against the usually smothering Los Angeles Kings.

If Pacioretty is fully healed, and his recent performance seems to indicate as such, don’t expect those trade rumors to keep gathering much, or any, steam. Finding his form from past seasons makes him one of the best weapons in the Canadiens’ lineup and a potential game breaker as the season wears on.

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The Golden Knights have hit another hurdle with their name, this time with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. A trademark request has been rejected, but it doesn’t sound like the team expects a name change.

The Vegas Golden Knights are really having a tough time catching a break in the naming department.

On Wednesday, a trademark request by the Golden Knights was rejected by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in large part because the name and logo were deemed too similar to that of the NCAA’s College of St. Rose Golden Knights.

Yes, that’s right, yet another roadblock between the NHL’s newest franchise and the name Golden Knights.

The first hurdle for the team, and the first real hubbub about the name, came shortly after the naming ceremony in late November. The team had only had the Golden Knights moniker in place for a week when it was reported by The Fayetteville Observer’s Steve DeVane that the U.S. Army was set to review Vegas’ use of the name because it is shared by the Army’s highly decorated parachute team.

And all that came after Vegas owner Bill Foley purposely strayed from his first choice for the team name, Black Knights, in order to avoid any conflict with the U.S. Army’s NCAA athletics programs and after the singular name, Knights, was reportedly avoided in order to forego any conflict with the OHL’s London Knights.

Suffice to say, the naming process has been a headache thus far. However, before those who despise the name and/or logo go celebrating in the streets, it should be noted that the latest naming hurdle likely means nothing in the long run.

“Office actions like this are not at all unusual, and we will proceed with the help of outside counsel in preparing a response to this one,” the statement reads.

In their statement, Vegas also pointed to the shared names of UCLA and Boston, both named the Bruins, Miami and Carolina, both named the Hurricanes, and even pointed out that Vegas and Clarkson share the Golden Knights name. None of this is to mention the MLB’s Texas Rangers and the NHL’s New York Rangers share a name.

“We believe, at the end of the day, all parties will embrace the fact that we are the Vegas Golden Knights and this absolutely will work out,” Craven told Gotz. “I hope people don’t overreact to this at all. We believe everyone will be satisfied. We are only going to enhance the name Golden Knights for everyone. That’s our goal.”

UPDATE: NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly has released the following statement:

“We are currently reviewing the Trademark Office's letter and will prepare a detailed response demonstrating why we continue strongly to believe the Vegas Golden Knights mark should be registered in co-existence with the college registration, just as a number of other nicknames currently co-exist in professional and college sports (particularly where there is no overlap as to the sport for which the nickname is being used). That response is not due until June 7, 2017.

“We consider this a routine matter and it is not our intention to reconsider the name or logo of this franchise. We fully intend to proceed as originally planned, relying on our common law trademark rights as well as our state trademark registrations while we work through the process of addressing the question raised in the federal applications.”

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Philip Larsen got knocked unconscious, the Canucks retailiated without knowing what happened, and they could have hurt their teammate even worse in the process.

The incident was horrific. We can all agree on that.

Tuesday night in New Jersey, Vancouver Canucks blueliner Philip Larsen skated behind his net to retrieve a puck. He had no idea Devils left winger Taylor Hall was pursuing the same puck. They collided heavily. Larsen bashed his head on the ice and was knocked out cold.

It was a scary scene, undoubtedly, one that understandably evoked a ton of emotion from Larsen's teammates. It was hardly a surprise to see a flurry of Vancouver players swarm Hall and make him fight.

It was a shame, however, for multiple reasons. First off, the hit wasn't dirty. It wasn't even a deliberate bodycheck. Hall leaned back on his skates to slow his momentum and held out his arms as if protecting himself from imminent impact. It was more of a crash than a bonecrushing hit. We can debate whether Larsen's head was the principal point of contact – I don't believe it was at all – but it's irrelevant when assessing Hall's guilt. There was no intent there. He won't be disciplined by the NHL for an accident.

And yet, thanks to the sport's culture of immediate and forceful vengeance, Hall had to fight anyway. In the spur of the moment, in the heat of elite competition, players are simply too jacked up to take a breath and assess the situation. They see a comrade fall and, in mere milliseconds, seek and destroy whoever caused the harm.

“You always have a problem with a hit when one of your guys gets hit hard," Canucks coach Willie Desjardins told the Vancouver Province's Jason Botchford after the the game. "It doesn’t matter if it’s a clean hit. You have a problem when a guy gets hit that hard. I think all coaches would.”

The ironic thing about this tough-guy mentality is that it could end up pushing one of the toughest things about hockey out of the game: good, clean hits. If the swarm mentality goes on much longer, the only guys willing to lay opponents out with big hits will be those ready and willing to drop the gloves right afterward. Sooner or later players might decide it's not worth sitting five minutes and/or risking injury just to put a lick on a guy. And, in Hall's case, he wasn't even trying to drill Larsen.

Will we ever stop seeing players attacked after clean hits? I doubt it. The revenge assault is a crime of passion, a snap decision. But maybe, just maybe, the Canucks and players all over the world can learn a bit from what happened right after Larsen got hit. Watch:

The first instinct, sadly, is not to help Larsen, but to destroy Hall. Center Michael Chaput immediately starts a fight. That causes a pileup of players from both teams – all around the unconscious Larsen. It's downright disturbing to see him getting kicked in the head by his own teammates’ skates. Canucks goalie Jacob Markstrom tries to box out Larsen and keep him safe. Markus Granlund tries as well but has to step over and onto Larsen in the process. It’s a miracle Larsen wasn’t cut. None of that would've happened had Chaput thought of Larsen first.

The ugly scene is a reminder that, right after a teammate takes a massive hit, the first priority should be to protect him. The best way to do that isn't to attack his attacker. It's to attend to the teammate first. There's plenty of time to review what happened and take down the perpetrator's number for later in the game. That's what jumbo-tron replays are for. And, in cases like Hall's, the violence would be averted altogether if players watched the replay and realized it was an accident.

Sadly, the idea is a pipe dream, and I don’t expect players to learn from Larsen's fate anytime soon. But we can always hope.